With its ongoing effort to make Windows Phone a viable competitor in the mobile world, Microsoft has expanded the Windows Phone Marketplace to five new countries making it available in 41 countries total.
Although Microsoft has only seen modest market growth of its mobile system among consumers, the software giant is still working to make its Windows Phone Marketplace available to more consumers. In its official Windows Phone Blog, Microsoft announces the expansion of the WP Marketplace to five new countries that includes Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru and the Philippines.
“If you live in one of these countries, tapping on the Marketplace title will soon (in might a few hours for all the light to come on) put loads of great apps and games at your fingertips” writes Michael Stroh. But people in the countries will only have access to the Marketplace will need to have Windows Phone 7.5 installed he also warned.
While this might represents an inconvenience for those who are still running the first iteration of Windows Phone (Windows Phone 7.0), having to install Windows Phone 7.5 Mango will not only give access users to the Marketplace, they will also get to rejoice all the new features that came with the Mango update. Maybe Microsoft has a legit reason to force users to have Windows Phone 7.5 installed in order to have access to the Marketplace.
And if you are a developer, the expansion of the Marketplace represents an opportunity to reach more users. In order to get access to the Marketplace in the news countries, Todd Brix from the Windows Phone team explains some of the guidelines that developers will need to follow.
“If you’d like your existing apps to reach Windows Phone owners in the new places, just log in into App Hub and select them from the list. – or choose “worldwide” if you want your app to appear in all the 41 of the market Marketplace is now available in. (You’ll need to do this even if you’ve previously opted to make your app available globally.)”
The apps will also be subject to additional requirements due to local laws, regulations, or norms he also explains. You can find more details for the Application certification Requirement with the link.
This is certainly good news for the consumers that live in the countries since they will have access to the great applications and games that are available in the Marketplace that have will steadily growing with more than 60,000 available apps. Developers will have more opportunities to sell the their apps in these new countries.
Further reading: Microsoft, Windows Phone 7